


The Problem with Remembering

by oimeathead



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-24
Updated: 2015-05-24
Packaged: 2018-04-01 00:12:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3998578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oimeathead/pseuds/oimeathead
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fitz has a theory about memory. Set immediately after S2E07: 'The Writing on the Wall'.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Problem with Remembering

“Besides,” Fitz says, “brains never delete files. They just—lose connections. But there’s always a backup, it’s just a matter of—digging and finding them.”

“So you’ve got backup files, too?” asks Mack.

 

#

 

He is nineteen and hates America. He might not hate it so much if he was somewhere with lakes and mountains, but of course the Academy is in the middle of a desert—or if he had any real friends, which he does not. The modules are interesting, definitely, and more challenging than he’d expected. But his mother has gone into remission and he’s beginning to think that SHIELD isn’t worth the trouble. 

When he gets the email informing him of a flatmate transfer, he shrugs. Two months have done nothing to make him and Galen get along, and at least his new flatmate is apparently his age.

He doesn’t feel quite so blasé when he opens the door and the flatmate turns out to be a girl.

“Hello,” she says brightly and sticks out her hand. Her smile is blinding and takes up half her face, which is wide and pale; she has dark hair and thick brows, which draw close in consternation as he stares and fails to shake her hand.

“Well,” she says, lowering her hand and picking up her bags, “I’m Jemma, and you must be Leopold.”

“Fitz,” he says automatically, jumping aside as she drags one of her suitcases over his foot. “Call me Fitz. I mean, if you want. That’s what—people call me. When they talk to me. Which is hardly. So.”

He watches her smile falter as she looks around the small flat, and finds himself wishing he’d made an effort to tidy up. There is a week of dishes in the sink, the floor is an ungodly mix of dusty and sticky, and the rather musty blanket on the couch is stained with pasta sauce. His gaming consoles are still plugged into the TV, the cords tangled and sprawling.

She visibly shakes herself and blinks, before cranking up her smile to full wattage and turning it on him. He awkwardly reaches behind him and closes the door. 

“Well, Fitz, which is my room?” she asks, looking questioningly at the doors at either end of the lounge. 

“You’re English,” he blurts out. 

“Yes!” she says, and her smile becomes a bit more genuine. “And I see you’re from Scotland—whereabouts?”

“Inverness. Um. What about you?”

“London, born and bred. Although my parents are from Devon.”

“Ah.” 

He fiddles with his sleeves and gestures vaguely at the room. She adjusts her giant carryall on her shoulder and flicks at some imaginary dust. 

“Um—sorry about the mess. I’ll clean it up. Later. After class. I’ve got holographic engineering next, which I presume you’ve got as well. It’s a laugh, I think—I think you’ll enjoy it. Um. I must clarify it’s not all me, the mess, I mean—I’m not that dirty really, just messy, the roommate before you was a total—never mind. Do you—shall I help you with your bags?” 

Jemma’s eyes crinkle with amusement and Fitz feels himself turn red. He takes one of her suitcases—not before tripping on the carpet—and shows her to her room. 

“Bloody Mary,” she says, as he flicks on the light. “Look at the state of this! It’s not so much a room as a hovel!”

“A rathole.”

“A sty.”

“A canker on the face of student housing.”

Jemma laughs and something starts buzzing in Fitz’s chest. He helps her unpack, they decide to bunk off holographic engineering to clean the flat, and six hours later they’re slumped on the clean floor inhaling cup noodles.

“We could eat off this floor,” Jemma says triumphantly, her mouth half-full.

“I’m pretty sure the flat’s cleaner than when I first moved in,” Fitz replies, crawling over to the couch and grabbing the remote control. “Telly?”

“Booze, then telly. Got any beer?”

Fitz thinks he might be in love.

 

#

 

He is in a box at the bottom of the ocean and Simmons is there with him. He loves her but the water is coming. He should have been braver. Now he will never know.

 

#

 

He is fifteen when his father leaves. Just walks out of the house while Fitz is having breakfast, bacon and crumpets with honey. His mother throws herself after him and screams and screams, the neighbours watch from the windows and one comes out to try and help. Fitz swallows his breakfast and goes upstairs to his room, where he watches his father push his mother off him and get into a cab. She falls onto the wet grass. 

_Goodbye and good riddance,_ Fitz screams silently in his head. 

His fingers tremble as he picks up Feynman’s lectures and starts reading. He is going back to university in two weeks; it will be his last semester at Cambridge. 

Mid-afternoon, his mother comes into his room. Her eyes are red and puffy and her breath smells. She runs her hands through his hair and watches him read.

“I’m so proud of you, darlin’,” she says thickly. “I’m so happy you’re off to college soon and you won’t be having that bastard hanging over you like—” 

Her voice cracks. Fitz puts his book away and his arms around her. 

Later that night, he emails the department administrator, requesting that he finish his master’s degree out of campus. They call him back and ask why; he cites urgent family obligations. 

He spends the year cleaning up vomit and makes so many trips to the ER that the nurses come to recognise him. Finally one of them helps him check his mother into rehab, and two days later his degree arrives in the mail. 

 

#

 

He is on the Bus playing chess with Ward, who is putting up a surprisingly decent fight. 

“I never thought I’d have a friend like you,” he says, and is immediately embarrassed. 

But Ward just looks up, his face curious.

“What do you mean?”

“Well—you know. A specialist. From Operations. Who jumps out of planes without a parachute on and does six hundred pushups every day. Ha! Checkmate.”

Ward frowns as he looks at the board.

“Were you just trying to distract me?” he asks. “Cheap trick, man.”

“No!” Fitz protests, although he’s a little relieved. “I meant it, actually. Remember how you used to find me and Simmons so annoying?”

“Used to?”

“Oh, come on, Ward. Last week’s mission proves it. We’re a team now. And we’re friends, which is why I feel zero guilt for beating you every single time.”

Ward snorts but doesn’t say anything to contradict him. Fitz smiles and unwraps his sandwich. 

 

#

 

He is twenty and has just topped the cohort. Simmons is a little sour. 

“You absolutely deserve it, Fitz, with how hard you’ve been working and with that last paper you wrote on supersymmetry in Asgardian monopoles—real potential for groundbreaking research! I’m just saying, it would be nice if, you know, the Academy instituted a system where cadets are ranked within their own faculties, using subject-specific rubrics…”

Fitz drinks his beer and wisely avoids any reference to the contrast between their study schedules. _Look at her little face,_ he thinks. _Red and round, like a tomato. She’s so embarrassed._ To be fair, though, she topped last year—what did she expect, that he wouldn’t work a little harder this year to beat her? Healthy competition was the scientist’s muse. 

“Come on, Simmons, let’s go sledding,” he says, interrupting her mid-sentence. 

Her mouth forms a round O of indignation and her eyebrows are as high as he’s ever seen them, but then all the fight goes out of her. 

“Very well, Fitz,” she says miserably. “I suppose this is as good a time as any to lose control of that thing you call a sled and careen painfully into a tree.” 

She cheers up considerably after they’ve gone a few rounds, whizzing down the slope behind Engineering and trudging back up again, taking turns to sit in front—if they both prefer it when Fitz is nestled behind her, arms pulling her close and breath warm against her neck, neither says anything.

 

#

 

Simmons walks past, muttering to herself and tucking her hair—short, and curlier than he would have expected—behind her ears.

“I suppose,” Fitz says to Mack. “The theory is sound.”

“That’s good news, isn’t it? If there’s anyone’s brain I trust to make the connections, it’s yours, turbo.”

Fitz shrugs. He keeps his eye on Simmons, catalogues the new lines around her eyes, the hard set of her mouth. Behind her, next to the old centrifuge, her tiny Tardis gathers dust.

“The problem is,” he says, “I don’t really want to remember.”

 


End file.
